Optional Rules

Sometimes a familiar game can look very different depending upon where you are playing it, or with whom you are playing the game. For example, baseball is baseball everywhere on the globe, but there are subtle variations in the rules even in the United States. In the National League the pitcher must also bat, in the American League no manager worth his chewing tobacco would put their pitcher near the plate holding a stick made from an ash tree in their hand.

The same thing goes for backgammon. There are some rules that may be played in some places, while completely absent in other. There is nothing particularly wrong with these optional rules, they just simply are what the name implies: optional.

One of the more well known optional rules is called Beavers. When playing with this rule active, a player may immediately redouble after being doubled. The person who is redoubling also keeps the doubling cube. The person who started this all off by doubling, has the option of refusing the redouble, or accepting it.

The Jacoby Rule is also something that is commonly known in backgammon circles, but is not a standard part of game play. Playing the Jacoby Rule speeds up the game a bit by getting rid of situations where a player does not double in order to play for a gammon. According to this rule gammons and backgammons only count as a single game so long as a double has not been called for by either player during the course of the game.

These are just two examples of some of the more well known optional rules that pop up in some of the games. These may or may not come into play depending upon whom you choose to play your backgammon with.